categories
HOT TOPICS
- The Accelerator Conundrum
- The Startup Velocity Question
- Platform as a Service
- Man and Superman
- Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS)
- The Future: End of Capitalism
- Capitalism 2.0
entrepreneur journeys
Building a Public FinTech Company From Scratch: OppFi CEO Todd Schwartz (Part 3)
Todd Schwartz: The technology wasn’t there. I didn’t know anything about lending. I didn’t know any other way to do it except take $100,000 of my own savings and open a one-room office in the north side of Chicago, get a printer, and use Excel to originate loans. I applied for the CILO license. Six
Building a Public FinTech Company From Scratch: OppFi CEO Todd Schwartz (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: How did you steer your career from that point on? Todd Schwartz: I went through the crisis of 2008. That’s when I learned a lion’s share of what I know today. I learned about investing. I learned about allocating capital. I learned what not to do. I learned it not from having success.
Building a Public FinTech Company From Scratch: OppFi CEO Todd Schwartz (Part 1)
Todd has built a public FinTech business with $7M of family money and another $8M of debt. OppFi went public in 2021. Impressive, capital-efficient, fundamentals-oriented journey. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, and raised, and in what kind of background? Todd Schwartz:
From Developer to Entrepreneur with $20M in Bootstrapped Revenue: Julien Salinas, CEO of NLP Cloud (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: What percentage of the customers are in the $10,000 range? Julien Salinas: Among our paid customers, it’s 10%. Maybe a bit less. Sramana Mitra: How much of this is what you call major account customers? Julien Salinas: I don’t have the exact number today, but I think it’s something like 150 to 200
From Developer to Entrepreneur with $20M in Bootstrapped Revenue: Julien Salinas, CEO of NLP Cloud (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: Your customers are all developers? Julien Salinas: Less and less, but still most of them. Sramana Mitra: Is there a specific genre of developers? Are they developing a particular platform? Julien Salinas: Initially, it was mainly machine learning engineers that use Python. All the machine learning engineers are Python developers. They taught me
From Developer to Entrepreneur with $20M in Bootstrapped Revenue: Julien Salinas, CEO of NLP Cloud (Part 1)
Numerous developers around the world are turning into successful entrepreneurs. Julien provides a textbook case study of a brilliant journey that is a highly repeatable blueprint to follow. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?
Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Sankaet Pathak, CEO of Synapse (Part 3)
Sramana Mitra: Given your vantage point, what open problems do you see out there? Not just ones you are working on but things that other entrepreneurs can work on. Sankaet Pathak: There are a couple of problems that are infrastructure-focused. Then there is one thing that is more consumer-focused that I feel somebody should work
Thought Leaders in Financial Technology: Sankaet Pathak, CEO of Synapse (Part 2)
Sramana Mitra: You are talking about US accounts for Indian residents? Sankaet Pathak: Yes. Their thought process stops there. They’re more focused on how much money leaves India versus what other obligations come as a function of it. Primarily, US regulators are still more relevant. Sramana Mitra: Interesting. At some level, I feel like you
